Canadian oil and gas will likely be exempt from new tariffs set to be introduced by US president-elect Donald Trump when he takes office in January, according to his former commerce secretary Wilbur Ross.
Ross, a key figure in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2021, told CBC on Sunday that taxing Canadian energy imports would likely increase costs for Americans without creating more US jobs.
Canada supplies nearly $160 billion worth of energy to the US, in oil, petroleum products, and natural gas.
"We import a lot of energy from Canada," Ross told CBC. "I can't imagine the [president-elect] would want to tax that."
During his campaign, Trump said he intends to introduce a minimum 10% global tariff on all imported products to boost domestic production.
Ross in the CBC interview also urged Western countries to bolster their defense budgets, with Trump long critical of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) including Canada failing to meet their pledge of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.
“Canada has to realize that America does have a much sturdier set of principles and policies now than what it had before,” he said. “So if I were Canada, I would be looking for what things Canada can volunteer to do to facilitate the relationship with the US.”